Aaeon has revised its Intel 6th Gen Core based COM-SKUC6 COM Express Type 6 Compact module, which we covered in brief in 2015 as part of Intel’s Skylake announcement, as a new “Kaby Lake” based COM-KBUC6. As you can see from a comparison of the side by side block diagrams below, not much has changed with the new COM-KBUC6 module except for a jump to slightly faster 7th Gen Core processors, once again using the dual-core, 15W U-Series.

Renesas has launched its RZ/G Linux Platform with the industrial-grade Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) Super Long-Term Support (SLTS) Linux kernel, which enables Linux-based embedded systems to be maintained for more than 10 years.

One of the highlights of this year's Defcon conference in Vegas was the Voting Machine Hacking Village, where security researchers tore apart the "secure" voting machines America trusts its democracy to.

The Voting Machine Hacking Village just released its master report on the vulnerabilities they found, and the participants are talking about it on Twitter, including Joe Fitz's note that he dumped the firmware off a Accuvote TSX with one of Adafruit's $15 open source hardware FT232h breakout boards.

Raspberry Pi’s single-board computers are surprisingly versatile devices that can be used for all sort of things ranging from desktop PCs to game consoles to smart speakers. Hackers have also been building Raspberry Pi-powered laptops for years, and back in 2014 a UK-based team launched one of the more interesting versions, since the Pi-Top allowed you to modify the case designs yourself using a 3D printer.

Now company is updating its hardware with a new modular Pi-Top model that features a bigger, better display, a sliding keyboard that makes it easy to access the system’s insides, and an “inventor’s kit” to get you started with developing hardware projects.

Back in 2014, we struggled to fill out our top 10 roundup of Linux-based robots and padded the list with conceptually similar autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In addition, many of those robots were proprietary or open source only on the software side. Today, however, it’s easy to fill out a top 10 list of Linux-based terrestrial robots that are open source in both software and hardware. In fact, we were forced to leave a number of worthy projects waiting in the wings.

The latest open source Linux robot to hit the scene — the Turtle Rover — won funding on Indiegogo only last week. This four-wheeled bot, which is larger and more sophisticated than typical wheeled robots like the popular, dual-wheeled GoPiGo, was designed to mimic Martian rovers. Another major player here is the recently rev’d, dual-wheeled TurtleBot 3.

Like most of our entries, these models are wheeled robots built around the Raspberry Pi. With the advent of the quad-core, WiFi-enabled RPi 3 model, we’ve seen far more advanced, and sometimes semi-autonomous Pi-based robots, in addition to the numerous RPi-based toy designs of recent years. Other SBCs have also inspired robot designs, especially the BeagleBone and BeagleBone Blue, which is especially suitable for robotics projects.

While open source hacker boards have expanded Linux robot development in recent years, a larger influence is the optimization of Linux platforms such as Ubuntu for interaction with the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware. A number of our top 10 robots include ROS integration.

I prototype, write, speak, and consult on physical computing gadgets and wanted a one-off attention-grabbing conference badge that would break the conversational ice when I walked around trade shows. That quest started a few years ago , with the first generation Arduino Pro-Mini and a 1.8” color TFT screen conference badge.

Axiomtek’s NA362 network appliance, which sits on the high end of our embedded coverage, gives you a choice of two new members of Intel’s Atom C3000 “Denverton” family: the quad-core C3538 and octa-core C3758. Earlier Linux-friendly Denverton products that we’ve covered were COM Express Basic Type 7 modules that tapped the original 16-core, 2.2GHz C3000. These include DFI’s DV970, Congatec’s Conga-B7AC, and Portwell’s PCOM-B701.

On Tuesday, Nvidia announced a new version of its automotive-grade compute platforms, Drive PX Pegasus. It's recognition that the computational needs of fully autonomous (also known as level 5) vehicles are going to be demanding. Such vehicles will have to fuse inputs from multiple sensors and sensor-types, then make sense of it all with no fuss to get us from A to B. "The reality is we need more horsepower to get to level 5," said Danny Shapiro, Nvidia's senior director of automotive.

All companies like to get the word out about their products, but Synology takes things to another level by touring the world and giving as many people access to product launches and feature updates as possible. Its latest round of events can be found in 17 different countries, with the next, Netherlands, taking place on October 12. The festivities wrap up in South Korea on October 26.

Purism's open source mobile phone has been been successfully crowdfunded when it reached and passed its goal of $1.5 million, with 13 days left.

Librem 5 security and privacy-focused smartphone is powered by a GNU/Linux operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux and running only Open Source software apps on top of a popular desktop environment like KDE Plasma Mobile or GNOME Shell.

OpenEmbedded Linux supports a range of x86 and ARM devices, while Xen isolates operating systems and unikernels. Applications and drivers from multiple ecosystems can run concurrently, expanding technical and licensing options. Special-purpose software can be securely composed with general-purpose software in isolated VMs, anchored by a hardware-assisted root of trust defined by customer and OEM policies. This architecture allows specialist software vendors to share platform and hardware support costs, while supporting emerging and legacy software ecosystems that have different rates of change.

“RISC-V is a free and open instruction set architecture [ISA] designed to enable chips across the full spectrum of computing devices, from embedded devices to the data centre,” said the firm.

“The release of the U54-MC Coreplex marks the architecture’s expansion into the application processor space – opening entirely new use cases for RISC-V. It is ideal for applications which need full operating system support such as AI, machine learning, networking, gateways and smart IoT devices.”

One of my favorite Onion articles ever is about a down-on-his-luck man who tried to build a PlayStation 2 in his home workshop as a Christmas present for his game-loving son. I bring that up because Oculus has released open source plans and files for its second Rift Development Kit on Github under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The release comes more than three years after the DK2 started selling for $350 (or what ended up being much more on the second-hand market).

A day ahead of Oculus Connect 4, Oculus has released documents for its second generation development kit, which originally released in mid-2014. DK2 improved upon its predecessor with a 1080p OLED display and positional tracking via an external camera. It in turn was succeeded by the Crescent Bay prototype which laid the foundation for the first consumer version of the Rift, which has been available since March 2016.

The Linux 4.15 kernel is looking to be a very exciting update for AMDGPU DRM driver users.

AMDGPU for Linux 4.15 is already very exciting as it should finally have the DC display code and enabled by default for RX Vega users. On top of that there's also been other AMDGPU Direct Rendering Manager work including an increased fragment size and a variety of other changes.

Only a few days after it leaked online, the Android-powered BlackBerry Motion smartphone was made official earlier today by BlackBerry at the GITEX 2017 event that takes place these days in Dubai, UAE.

At first glance, BlackBerry Motion appears to be a variant of the BlackBerry KEYone smartphone, but without a physical keyboard, which is a bit unusual for a BlackBerry phone. The device is powered by Google's Android 7.1 "Nougat" mobile OS and has some interesting specifications for a mid-range mobile phone.

Featuring a gorgeous 5.5-inch Full HD 1080p display with minimum bezels and an IP67 certified water-resistant design, BlackBerry Motion is using a Snapdragon 625 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB internal storage, a 12MP f/2.0 rear camera, a fingerprint reader, and a giant, non-removable 4,000mAh battery that should last all day long.

Hologram announces today the release of Nova, the world’s first open source modem for cellular IoT connectivity. The Nova toolkit includes the 4G LTE Cat-M ready Nova USB modem, an SDK for edge computing, and access to Hologram’s industry leading global cellular network.

At today's hardware event, Google has announced a surprise new product: Clips. It's a little standalone camera that changes how pictures are taken. The Clips device itself figures out when something exciting is happening—happy faces, good lighting, interesting framing—and, when it thinks the time is right, it records (silent) video captures.

[...]

As long as your phone has Wi-Fi Direct or Bluetooth, you can use it to sort through Clips' pictures and decide what to keep. Those phones are currently oddly limited; Google says it needs a device running Android 7.0 or better, but the company specifically lists only the Pixel, Samsung Galaxy S7, and Samsung Galaxy S8 as being compatible. A larger list of compatible handsets is presently unavailable.

Google said Pixel users have reported high satisfaction with their devices. Now, at the latest ‘Made By Google’ Event, they’ve come up with the new members of the family, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. The company has emphasized on the development of AI along with hardware to bring the next breakthrough device.fos

That's about it for the Pixel 2s. We saw two phones made by two manufacturers that give two distinctively different impressions when you see them. The Pixel 2 XL feels like a modern, capable smartphone, while the Pixel 2 feels like a phone that shouldn't exist.

The traditional local area network is connected with an Ethernet switch and Cat cables. The basic components of an Ethernetwork are network interface cards (NICs), cables, and switches. NICs and switches have little status lights that tell you if there is a connection, and the speed of the connection. Each computer needs an NIC, which connects to a switch via an Ethernet cable. Figure 1 shows a simple LAN: two computers connected via a switch, and a wireless access point routed into the wired LAN.

More in Tux Machines

Linux: To recurse or not

Linux and recursion are on very good speaking terms. In fact, a number of Linux command recurse without ever being asked while others have to be coaxed with just the right option. When is recursion most helpful and how can you use it to make your tasks easier? Let’s run through some useful examples and see.

today's leftovers

MX Linux Review of MX-17. MX-17 is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS Linux communities. It’s XFCE based, lightning fast, comes with both 32 and 64-bit CPU support…and the tools. Oh man, the tools available in this distro are both reminders of Mepis past and current tech found in modern distros.

Samsung stopped the distribution of the Android 8.0 Oreo operating system update for its Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones due to unexpected reboots reported by several users.
SamMobile reported the other day that Samsung halted all Android 8.0 Oreo rollouts for its Galaxy S8/S8+ series of Android smartphones after approximately a week since the initial release. But only today Samsung published a statement to inform user why it stopped the rollouts, and the cause appears to be related to a limited number of cases of unexpected reboots after installing the update.

The Xen Project is comprised of a diverse set of member companies and contributors that are committed to the growth and success of the Xen Project Hypervisor. The Xen Project Hypervisor is a staple technology for server and cloud vendors, and is gaining traction in the embedded, security and automotive space. This blog series highlights the companies contributing to the changes and growth being made to the Xen Project and how the Xen Project technology bolsters their business.

A few days back I reported on Intel Icelake patches for the i965 Mesa driver in bringing up the OpenGL support now that several kernel patch series have been published for enabling these "Gen 11" graphics within the Direct Rendering Manager driver. This Icelake support has been quick to materialize even with Cannonlake hardware not yet being available.

Introduced as part of LunarG's recent Vulkan SDK update is the VLF, the Vulkan Layer Factory.
The Vulkan Layer Factory aims to creating Vulkan layers easier by taking care of a lot of the boilerplate code for dealing with the initialization, etc. This framework also provides for "interceptor objects" for overriding functions pre/post API calls for Vulkan entry points of interest.